Inversion
by Punctuator
Summary: Before the mission, Kaneda and Corazon encounter trouble on an icy road. A quiet, chilly, snowcovered tale of survival written in February 2007.


**INVERSION**

How many people could claim "Watch out!" as their last words? Had to be a number, a calculation. Hard to record, "last" meaning, ultimately, "dead." Her shoulder hurt. Her right shoulder, where the seatbelt had been. The skin at the base of her neck on the right-hand side felt scraped. How many people could claim

"Corazon."

"-- 'Watch out' as their last--" The words left her softly, on an exhalation.

"Corazon."

Half reply, half continuation. "-- 'Watch out.'"

"Corazon!"

Her consciousness returned with the breaking of the thought. She opened her eyes. For a moment, she thought nearly of re-opening them. She could see nothing. Nearly nothing. She blinked through images from her head; the world focused itself through a layer as though of gray dust; and there, still largely in darkness though clearly, was

"Kaneda."

He smiled slightly through his tidy beard. "Welcome back."

"I must look terrible," she heard herself mutter.

"Why is that?"

"Your hair is standing up."

"So is yours."

Her hand went to her head. In going, her knuckles swung slightly wide and bumped a surface cool, felted, and hard. Her hair was curtaining toward it. Upward.

"We're upside-down," she said.

"Yes, we are."

He was watching her with his thoughtful dark eyes, patiently. He wanted, she realized, to see if she remembered, if there had been damage to her skull and brain. Beyond the pressure on her shoulder, she could feel something else. Cold. A powdery thorough cold--

"There was a deer. In the road."

Not just the one. Cassie had said to her-- when? Yesterday? This last morning?-- As Corazon had zipped her jacket and Kaneda stood waiting at the door, Cassie had looked up from her newsscreen and her coffee--

"-- never just one. They're always in pairs. Don't know why. Just make sure you look out."

The North American white-tail deer. Females averaging one hundred and ten pounds. Roughly three and a half feet at the shoulder. Purposeful stride on thin legs. A winter coat like unbrushed velvet in taupe. One leaving the snow-covered road on the far side as she and Kaneda, driving, noted. A hitch in her chest expanding to a moment of panic as she and he then noted coming from the right

"Watch out--!"

The words barked out unbacked by thought. Kaneda pulled the steering wheel hard to the left, away from the unbrushed velvet shoulders, the winter-thin legs, the eyes perfectly black above the delicately squared muzzle.

_Always in pairs. Don't know why._

The tires slid on the snow. Before Kaneda could regain control, the microvan's back end was spinning forward, pulling them in a circle across the road. A brief dropping sensation as Kaneda took his boot from the accelerator, a view of the second deer, now behind them, reaching the far side of the road, now on their right. Kaneda was steering into the spin-- which might or might not have been the correct thing to do; Corazon could never remember-- when an impact jolted through the van from the back. The bumper on the passenger side. They'd hit the guard rail. Another impact, things moving far too slowly, on Kaneda's side, at or near his door. And then they were airborne.

Turning in the air. The snow was falling upward. She saw it clearly through the windshield. Flakes bigger than her thumb-tip. Tree branches black and skeletal against the dusty white sky. And the snowy ground dropping toward their heads--

Now the world was plum and gray. And cold. She pushed away the airbags that had expanded and then re-collapsed in her unconsciousness. The windshield before her was unbroken but packed outwardly with snow the color of dead human skin. Early evening light was coming from somewhere. Behind them. She twisted her head to look. The back window had broken out. Snow was drifting-- had drifted-- in where the glass had been. Cold was, too.

"Can you feel your legs, Corazon?" Kaneda asked quietly.

"Yes." She concentrated, now feeling the cold in her torso. Just a whisper below her t-shirt, beneath her sweater and her jacket. She focused on her legs, noting pressure, a cold heavy holding, at her right foot, both calves, her thighs. She tried to pull free, tried again harder. Tried until she was breathless, until she could feel sweat tingling out on her forehead and her upper back. She stopped, stilled herself. "But I can't-- There's something pinning them--"

"Mine, too."

She caught it his voice: a tightness. Likely, he felt ashamed for sending them into a ditch, even though the fault was at least half hers. She should never have shouted. But there'd been the suddenness of it, that electric jolt of panic-- No matter. No excuse, either. But she could recriminate later. She asked Kaneda: "Are you hurt?"

He smiled-- _Did she look that afraid--?_ -- "No. But I cannot move my legs, either. I can move my toes, but everything else is pinned."

"So now--"

"Now we wait."

"Of course."

"The CEF is working."

He nodded toward the dash. In the darkness, a tiny orange light was blinking. CEF. Catastrophic Engine Failure. A system now additional to the geopositioning software and transmittal systems standard on all passenger vehicles, the CEF sent out a signal when the engine shut down under violent conditions. Such as an unplanned flight into a roadside ditch not quite ravine-grade but living definitely up to the idea that everything near a North American highway was larger-- or, in this case, deeper-- than it appeared. So, yes: they had only to wait. Help would be on its way.

"How long was I unconscious?" she asked.

"Fifteen minutes, possibly. I was out for a time, too."

"So--"

"We were just over an hour from home. Depending on the weather, they should have us located within three hours."

_Depending on the weather._

Something cold and sandlike burred against the back of her neck, beneath the curtain of her hair. Snow, spinning in through the broken back window. Corazon zipped her jacket all the way up, bringing her chin inside the quilted collar. She looked over at Kaneda. "Here."

"What--?"

She reached over, zipped his jacket all the way up, too. Her thumb brushed his bearded jaw.

"Thank you," he said.

She nodded. Her hand was still near his face. She'd had her gloves off, and now of course they were gone, and her chilling fingers were simply drawn to the warmth coming off his skin. She crossed her arms against her chest and tucked her hands into her jacketed armpits. Kaneda did the same for himself.

"My head hurts," she said.

"Mine, too."

They sat for a time watching the packed snow beyond the windshield. The wind rocked the microvan; their inverted shoulders swayed slightly, in unison.

"I should have hit that deer," Kaneda said. "Cassie said that. Remember? Better to hit the animal squarely than to--"

"I would have."

She felt him looking at her. She looked from the windshield to his thoughtful eyes.

He nodded. "Yes, you would."

Another pause. The light from behind was beginning to fade. The snow before them was becoming even more corpselike in color.

"What about Trey?" she asked.

"No. He would not have hit it."

Corazon smiled slightly. "Searle?"

"He would have hit it. Then he would have gone back and patched it up. At the very least, he would have apologized to it."

"Mace."

"I am thinking the words 'Die, you sucker.' You--?"

Corazon chuckled. "And Capa--?"

"Capa." Kaneda drew a deep breath, held it as relaxed as a man savoring a long draw of good pipe smoke, and released it slowly. "Capa would have stopped the van. He would have calculated the ideal velocity and angle. And _then_ he would have hit the deer."

* * *

They talked quietly, or continued at it, their quiet less out of habit than out of response to the stillness in the air. Corazon was not claustrophobic: she sensed less that she was trapped than that she was in a setting requiring naturally minimal movement and sound. A library, perhaps, the snow on the windshield and the side windows an inches-thick-- feet-thick?-- layer of dust beyond which stood the spines of tall books. She, like Kaneda, was talking to stay focused, to ignore the growing shivering, the shivering becoming shuddering. Absently, they were tipping their heads inward. His cap, like her gloves, had vanished; the microvan was just that, after all; their hair was nearly touching. The snow drifted closer to their shoulders through the broken back window, and she shared with him the realization, unspoken, that they were being buried alive.

"At least the roof didn't collapse," he said. He shifted his shoulder against the binding of his seatbelt. "What will you miss?"

She shifted, too, and was mildly surprised at the weight of cold that stirred and resettled itself around her neck and torso. "When--?"

"When we go."

"I'll have an unfair advantage," she said.

"How is that?"

"The things I love most I'm taking with me."

"We all will have our personal allowances-- Ah." Kaneda glanced at her. "That's not what you meant, is it?"

"No." Corazon smiled. "The greenhouse, the plants-- An obligation, yes, and a duty. But I'll love them as well."

She saw him smile into his beard, his eyes focused downward-- upward-- at his chest. "You're laughing at me," she said.

"No-- I was just thinking: Do you know what I'll miss?"

"Should I guess?"

"If you like."

She flashed her teeth at the windshield. "Your Simon and Garfunkel albums."

Two matched and ghostly reflections: next to hers in the powdery glass, his smile widened briefly. "You've been listening."

"Yes."

"Difficult not to, isn't it? You must think I'm hard of hearing."

"No. The walls are thin. I understand. But that's not the answer, is it?"

"You'll believe me mad."

"Try me."

"Snow."

She laughed quietly; he joined her. She asked: "Would you prefer that people not know you were at a flower show today?"

"Ornamental horticulture," Kaneda countered. "A most beautiful display."

"It was a flower show."

"To which I was happy to accompany you."

She went quiet, her smile moving inward. A dusting of time collected with the snow against the windshield. She breathed within the confines of the seatbelt, and her heart was like a watchworks. She could see her breath.

"Watch out," she said.

His breath. She could see his breath, too. "What--?" Kaneda asked.

His voice sounded quieter. Muffled. Possibly the snow was filling her ears.

"Watch out," she repeated, half absently, half to hear if she could hear-- And then Kaneda was turning next to her, toward her, his jacket rustling tightly against his stuck seatbelt, an awkward twisting of his chest and torso, and he was putting his arms around her and drawing her close.

"Watch out for what?" he asked evenly. "Corazon: watch out for what?"

The split second in which the contact was shocking: that's what he intended. Certainly it was. Corazon exhaled sharply, was deeply aware of her next chilly breath. She focused on his shoulder, his jacketed neck. Warmth radiated from the nylon padding, slight but definite. She angled her stiff arms around him, sharing warmth back. "Nothing," she said. "I'm alright now."

"Good." He squeezed her, as best as he was able. "Keep talking."

* * *

Finally: from above-- or below-- through the floor of the van, came a rumbling. Motors. Voices, distant and muffled. Then, closer, sharply, a man shouted: "Here! They're over here!"

"Mace," Kaneda murmured. She heard his smile. "Of course. Playing the hero."

* * *

A gash in his left leg, running nearly the length of his outer thigh. He'd been bleeding all the while. She left her bed in the infirmary, where they were stuck for the night for observation, and walked in her slippers and heavy pajamas over to his corner of the room and looked down at him.

"You said you weren't hurt."

Kaneda looked back at her. Odd, she thought, how she could see the smile he was hiding. A skill freshly acquired.

"And you said you would have hit the deer. Goodnight, Doctor."

"Captain." She hid a smile for him. Then she went back to bed.

**THE END**


End file.
